CHAPTER 28

W hen they arrived at Dylan and Ada's house, Carina didn't wait for Kieran like she usually did, so Kieran locked the car and followed her toward the door, which Carina had opened and hurried through.

"Hi. We're here," she said once they were both inside and Kieran had closed the door behind them.

"Who's we ?" Ada asked from her position on the sofa with a beer bottle in her hand.

"Kieran and me," Carina said, sitting down next to her.

"Did Dylan call everyone she's ever met to come over and watch me?"

"Possibly," Kenna replied as she walked into the living room from the kitchen. "And here's your refill, but that's your last one until Dylan comes home. The last thing we need is you getting drunk and either passing out or slipping out the back somehow and driving to wherever Dylan is right now."

Ada took the bottle and handed Kenna the empty one.

"Like she'd even tell me where they were going to arrest the prick. She intentionally left out that all-important detail because she was afraid I'd show up and punch him or something and ruin her arrest."

"Well, you want him to go to prison, right? Not get out on some technicality," Ripley reasoned as she walked into the room and stood next to Kenna.

"Hey, we're ordering pizza," Raleigh announced as she walked in from wherever she was.

Dylan really had called everyone she'd ever met.

"Did Hollis get her down yet?" Ada asked before she took a drink.

"Yeah, Eden's out. She didn't nap today, and she still usually goes down for at least a half hour or so, depending on school, so she can nap now and stay up a little later if she can't get back to sleep when we get home," Hollis answered while she came down the stairs. "Sorry, we couldn't find a sitter last-minute."

"Don't apologize. If anything, I'm pretty sure Dylan asked all of you to come babysit me ," Ada noted and turned to Kieran. "Hey, again. My wife called you, too?"

"Uh…" Carina began.

"She called Carina, and we were together," Kieran helped. "Because we were on a date."

Carina looked at her and smiled.

"Oh, a date, huh?" Ada turned to Carina. "I thought she was straight as an arrow, Carina."

" She's standing right here," Kieran said, waving her hand. "And she's… figuring things out."

"Well, I like her," Ada replied and took another drink. "Just don't figure things out with Carina here and end up hurting her, and we're cool."

"I don't plan on it," Kieran said.

"Most people don't plan on hurting other people, and yet, they still do. Others, however, definitely plan on it," Ada added.

Kieran wasn't sure that Ada needed or even wanted a response to her pretty rhetorical statement right now, so she didn't say anything and sat on the floor in front of the sofa. Hollis had her phone out and was probably working on that pizza order for them as she sat on an oversized chair next to Raleigh. Carina was focused on Ada. Ripley moved to sit on Ada's other side, while Kenna sat on the floor at Ripley's feet. Kieran thought about moving to do the same with Carina but opted not to since now wasn't the time.

"So, what happened?" Carina asked. "I only got a little of it from Dylan before she had to go."

"She found this guy a while ago and didn't tell me at first because this isn't the first time we've had leads in Noah's case. He was in the area when Noah went missing, though, and was a friend of a friend of the guy who owned the acreage where they found Noah's body. No one would cooperate with police to give her anything to go on, but Dylan is amazing." Ada smiled as she looked down at the floor in front of her feet. "She kept at it, and it turns out, this guy ran gun shows. He travels the country, I guess, and just puts on these gun shows where people can walk in and buy tons of guns and not have to go through all the same background checks they have to at shops. Anyway, he ran one a few towns over, and Dylan got a wire based on something. I don't know what, exactly, but something. She has him confessing on it. I guess that friend of his mentioned that kids liked to play at the lake. There's this whole rope-swing-and-cliff-diving right of passage thing. Noah and I were there that day. I was in the water, and someone took him. I never thought he ran away. No one did. He was there one second, and the next, I'm coming up for air, and my brother was gone."

"That's how you met Dylan," Kieran recalled what Dylan had shared with her.

"She showed up looking like the woman who would find my brother and knew how to do it. I was young and na?ve and didn't understand how it all worked. She made a promise, though, and when she didn't keep it, I hated her, and I couldn't forgive her."

"And now, you're married. Happy ending," Kenna offered.

" You did that, asshole," Ada said with a little laugh.

"Hey, all I did was ask you both to appear on my show. You two fell in love."

"Yeah, we did," Ada said with a coy smile. "She kept her promise by finding Oliver."

"Um… New to the party here. Who's Oliver, again?" Kieran asked.

"My brother."

"I thought Noah was your brother."

"Noah and Oliver were switched at birth. It's a whole thing," Kenna explained. "Dylan figured it out and found Oliver, who is Ada's biological brother."

"He's a big-time doctor with a family," Ada shared. "Lives in New York now. Noah might not have been my brother by blood, but he was in every other way; in the ways that matter. We didn't have the best childhood, but it got so much worse when he disappeared. I always knew someone had taken him, and I blamed Dylan for not finding him, but I had no idea she'd been looking for him the entire ten years we weren't talking. She found Oliver and told me that she'd never give up trying to find Noah. She never had. When she found his body, it was really hard. I mean, I always had this understanding that he was gone, but there's just this little hope that he's out there still and maybe dealing with some bad shit that happened to him, but still alive. When Dylan found him, he was bones, and they couldn't tell us much."

"That was probably a good thing," Raleigh chimed in. "Better to not know the specifics, yeah?"

"Yeah, I know you get it," Ada said to the woman whose daughter had gone missing for about a year not all that long ago. "I guess it's better not to know what, if anything, was done to him. Besides, this guy is a known pedophile. The FBI even had a file on him… Shit." Ada shook her head then. "That's how she did it." She laughed a little. "My genius wife got the FBI file on him and used their case against him to get her damn warrant. God, she's good."

"He's a…" Ripley faded out.

"Yeah. He doesn't have a record because he runs this child porn ring but doesn't actually keep any of the files on his devices. He just built the thing and has protected himself behind firewalls, servers, lawyers, and a million other tricks. He's smart. Anyway, Dylan said she heard him on the wire."

"Telling someone about Noah?" Kenna asked.

"He saw us at the lake; claims that he's never touched a kid himself and hadn't ever attempted to take one before. He just saw the money in it and likes the pictures and videos. Disgusting." Ada took a long drink of her beer. "He'd been looking for someone a little younger, but when he didn't see anyone else there, he decided to take Noah while I was underwater. I guess he didn't want a girl. Lucky me."

"Neither of you was lucky," Carina offered.

"He said that he took Noah and put him in his car, which was parked somewhere, I don't know, and that he'd knocked him out first to get him in there because Noah was putting up a struggle. By the time he'd gotten Noah to his friend's property, though, to be transported to someone who would've done unspeakable things to my brother, Noah was dead. He'd hit him too hard with something to get him to shut up, and he couldn't even remember what it was. Probably a rock. I don't know, either. Anyway, Noah died about five minutes after I came up for air. Maybe not even that long."

"Jesus, I'm sorry," Hollis said.

"The only good thing is that no one else hurt him," Ripley added.

"Yeah, I guess. He's still dead, though." Ada swallowed. "They buried him there and had the car cleaned. Dylan said it was a rental, so they couldn't have tracked it if they wanted to."

"It's over now," Kenna suggested.

"Not yet. Dylan still has to arrest him, and someone has to put him behind bars and keep him there. How many other kids has he kidnapped since he took my brother?"

"Maybe none," Kieran said.

"What?" Ada asked.

"Just that you said that he'd never taken a kid before that, and Noah died, so I don't know if he'd risk that again. It didn't exactly work out the first time."

"Right," Ada said.

Just then, the door opened, and Dylan walked in. She stood there, after tossing her keys and phone on the table, and looked only at her wife. Ada stood up and handed her beer to Carina almost absently.

"Babe?"

"We got him," Dylan replied.

Ada practically jumped over the table and rushed into Dylan's arms. Dylan held on to her, and they stood like that for a long moment, with the rest of the group not sure what to do with themselves.

"He's in jail?" Ada finally asked.

"He's being booked as we speak. I only left because I wanted to tell you."

"God, babe. You did it. You really fucking did it."

"He's lawyered up. He thought we were there on the child porn thing, so he called his attorney the instant he saw our cars pull up outside the house."

"He lives here?" Carina asked.

"No, he was visiting that buddy of his, which is why we wanted to act tonight. He was supposed to leave for another show tomorrow." Dylan was still holding on to Ada around the waist and staring into her eyes while answering Carina's questions. "He should take a deal. We have him on the wire, confessing. He even said Noah's name, babe. He can't take that back. We've got him."

"What deal are you going to give a child killer?" Ripley asked.

"Life without parole, taking the death penalty off the table," Carina supplied. "That's about all my office would ever consider. But even if they just give him twenty-five on the murder count, whatever else they can find on him, now that they can get all the search warrants, will keep him locked up forever. He's not getting out. Whether he takes a deal or not, he's not getting out, Ada."

"This calls for a celebration," Kenna suggested as she stood. "We have pizza coming, right?"

"On its way," Hollis replied.

"Beer in the kitchen," Kenna said. "How about we toast to Noah?"

"Yeah, I'd like that," Ada replied before she kissed Dylan. "Thank you," she whispered to her wife.

The action was happening behind Kieran, who was still sitting on the floor, but she could only stare at Carina, who looked beautiful as she smiled at her friends. After a moment, Carina met her eyes, looking a little confused as to why Kieran was staring at her, but Kieran only smiled at her.

When the pizza arrived, everyone helped themselves in Ada and Dylan's kitchen, and they ate around the island, with some of them sitting at the kitchen table. Their toast to Noah was short and sweet, but Ada's eyes welled with tears before she pushed them away and pretended like she hadn't just cried a little. Dylan kissed her temple and told her that she loved her.

Kieran moved into Carina's side then, wrapped her arms around her waist, and whispered, "Can we go when you're ready?"

"Are you okay?" Carina asked, looking concerned.

"I think they want to be alone." She nodded toward Dylan and Ada, who were in their own little world. "And I'd like to be alone with you."

"Yeah, okay. We can go," Carina replied.

They said their goodbyes, but not before Hollis and Raleigh did it first after Eden came down the stairs looking adorably sleepy and hurrying over to Hollis to stand at her side and wrap her tiny arms around Hollis's waist.

Kieran drove them back to Carina's, and Carina told her to wait a second. She did as she was told, and the garage door was opened for her. Kieran pulled in next to Carina's car, climbed out to grab her bag, and met Carina inside. When she did, she was met with a garage door opener being held out to her.

"For you."

"Carina, you don't–"

"I want you to be able to come and go as you please," Carina stated simply. "Might be too soon, but I don't care. I'll get you a key, too, and the code to the alarm. I'm not scared of this, Kieran. I'm not worried that we're going too fast or that I'll scare you away, either. If I'm late from work and you want to be here to meet me for dinner or just to be here when I get home, I want you to be able to let yourself in. It's as simple as that. If you don't want it, you just have to say so, but–"

She stopped when Kieran took the remote and set it on the counter behind Carina.

"Can we go to bed?" Kieran asked.

"It's not that late. I thought we'd just watch a movie now that tonight's big event is behind us. I don't want to talk about anyone else getting arrested or being behind bars tonight, if we can avoid it. But are you tired? We–"

"No," Kieran replied.

"Okay. You want to watch TV in bed or something? Shower?"

"No." Kieran shook her head and wrapped her arms around Carina's waist. "I don't want any of that."

Carina tilted her head and said, "It's our second date, and it didn't exactly turn out how either of us had hoped. Kieran, I'm not in any hurry here. I know you've never been with a woman, and like you said tonight, you're still figuring things out."

"Nope. I figured it all out," she said, moving all the way against Carina. "It's you. I just want you. I'm not scared of this, either, Carina."

"Not even a little bit?" Carina asked as she squinted at her.

"I'm scared I won't be good at it, but that's not enough to make me not try."

"Wait. Sex? Are you talking about sex?"

"I'm talking about all of it. I've had one significant relationship my entire life, and it ended. I wasn't all that happy in it for most of it, so I don't know how I'll do this whole relationship thing with you, and I guess I'm a little scared that I'll mess it up, but I'm not scared scared." She rolled her eyes. "That came out wrong. I meant that I'm scared in a good way."

"And you want to go upstairs?"

"Yes," Kieran told her.

"Okay," Carina replied. "If you're ready, I'm ready."

"Then, take me to bed, Carina Whitlock."